QotD: ‘Art Week’

That’s right, I’m saying pornography is art. Take a Xanax. It’s not like art is God or something. The way I see it, art has no problem sinking to the level of pornography.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can get down to the business of radical feminist critique of that shit. We can get on with the case against art of violence, art of oppression, art of human suffering, art of titillation. If pornographers don’t have to defend pornography as art, we can force’em to defend it as good art. Which is of course impossible! Good art is informed by Truth ‘n’ Beauty, not by violence, oppression, human suffering, and titillation.

Also by Jill, from the comments thread:

Pornography has never really been illegitimate, though, if you think about it. Yeah, people pretend it’s evil and unacceptable, but that’s just to create the ghetto where they can cordon off the hardcore behind pay-per-view lines of demarcation. This allows them to be sanctimonious yet continue to participate in and consume the everyday porn that remains on TV, mainstream movies, video games, magazines, billboards, shop windows, cellphones, etc.

To those who say pornography can’t be art because it’s a hate crime, I would reiterate that art-as-expression-of-idea doesn’t preclude criminality. To those who view my inclusive definition as an endorsement of pornography, I invite you to demonstrate this with an excellent argument.

Meta

It is true, and very much to the point, that women are objects, commodities, some deemed more expensive than others - but it is only by asserting one’s humanness every time, in all situations, that one becomes someone as opposed to something. That, after all, is the core of our struggle.